Follow the exciting and not so exciting adventures of Andrea in Mumbai...

Friday, August 03, 2007

Mumbai ki Barish...

To sum up Mumbai in one word at the moment would be 'wet'. My first day the rain wasn't too bad, but now it's absolutely bucketing down, and I've gotten soaked already.

When I arrived I quickly found Lee from ATMA and we stuffed my one suitcase into the back of a rickshaw and were on our way.

I won't say too much about the flights, the one from Brisbane to Darwin was packed and not very impressive, the one from Darwin to Mumbai was half empty and I had an entire row to myself!

After having a brief chat with Lee and my new housemate Jenny, I went straight to sleep.

The apartment is nice, quite roomy and clean. Ours is on the top floor (which made dragging my suitcase up the stairs quite fun) and it is opposite a nice park. The suburb I'm staying in, Bandra, is quite upmarket and has many trees, making it leafy and green. I've been told by Jenny that our landlords are friends with Salman Khan. Apparently she met his little sister once at their flat.

Well back to the story of my first day, we couldn't leave the house as early as we wished because the landlords were coming over to inspect one of the beds (not mine) on suspicion of bedbugs. The problem is that although they put this herbal stuff on it, there's no way to know whether (a) there really were bedbug in the first place or (b) whether the stuff has worked or not.

After that Jenny took me to a bagel place for breakfast. Yes I know, shocking, my first day in INdia and I had a bagel for breakfast. But it was damn good and so was the iced cappucino. As the place has wireless internet, I expect I'll be spending a lot more time there once I have my laptop... Lee met us there and while Jenny went for work, Lee and I went out ot run errands. Our first stop was FAb India (google it, they've got a website!) where I picked up two outfits. It's not that expensive and has beautiful traditional cotton outfits as well as its own range of organic products!

From there we went to a photo studio where I had some passport photos taken so that I could get my rail pass and from there to Bandra statin. I now have a second class ticket for the next three months which only cost me 368 rupees! That's a little over $10! So the only money I'll be spending on transport from now on will be for miscellaneous rickshaws.

Then for lunch we had Bhelpuri and Dahipuri which were both delicious from an excellent chaat (snack) place which makes everything with filtered water!

After this I went home for a nap and then later on took a walk to Bandra Bandstand which is on the oceanfront (the Arabian Sea). It was raining lightly and my shoes were giving me blisters so I took a rickshaw home and had another nap.

Later on I met up with Jenny and her friends Piya and Himanshu from work and then we met Lee and her friend Hayley for dinner. Following this we went to a very upmarket bar called Zenzi. I was tempted to order a cocktail but as they were even more expensive than in Australia, I settled for a pineapple juice instead.

Today I was meant ot go into mobile creches for the first time but couldn't due to the rain as apparently the trains were not running. S oinstead I've spent half the day napping and the other half wandering around looking for somewhere to eat or exploring more of Bandra. Nothing seems to open here before 10am so it took me awhile to get breakfast.

Hopefully come Monday I'll have my laptop and some exciting stories about my first day at work! Until then here's hoping that some of the Mumbai barish finds its way to Australia and that I can find some way not to ruin every single outfit I've brought...